by Frank Zafiro
I took a step toward the closet. I had a sense of warmth and caught the scent of sweat and then an arm snaked around my neck and jerked me backward. My yelp of surprise was cut short as my body slammed into my attacker’s.
I reached up and grabbed onto the arm. It felt like banded iron as I struggled to pull it free. A whiskered chin scraped against my cheek.
“In five seconds, you are going to pass out unless you stop fighting me.” His whisper sounded like a shout in my ear.
I let my arms fall to my sides. He eased the pressure on my neck, just a little.
“Where’s the knife?” he asked. “And don’t tell me your cousin has it. I’ve checked. You don’t have any fucking cousins.”
Thoughts raced through my head.
Oster sent him.
He hasn’t found the knife yet.
When I didn’t answer right away, his arm constricted again. Dark spots danced before my eyes. My hands flew up to his arm.
“You can tell me or I can choke you to death,” he growled in my ear.
I dropped my arms. He loosened his grip slightly.
“In the garage,” I wheezed.
He squeezed again. “Bullshit. I’ve been out there.”
I flailed at his arm wildly. After a few seconds, he eased off. “Try again.”
“Garage,” I squeaked. “Secret place.”
There was a pause, then his body shifted. I felt something hard press against my back. “You know what that is?” he asked.
“Gun,” I managed.
“That’s right. Don’t do anything stupid.” He released his grip on my neck. “Now, let’s go. Slowly.”
I rubbed my throat and turned around cautiously. He circled with me, staying out of sight. I didn’t bother trying to look at him. I figured that was a bad idea. He nudged me forward and I walked through the house to the back door. As I unlocked it, I wondered why he hadn’t made his entry through there instead of the front. The cold metal in my back kept me from getting too far down that path of speculation.
The industrial lock on the garage hung on the hasp, cut through. I lifted the garage door up and we stepped inside.
“No lights,” he instructed.
I smiled in the darkness and a plan crystallized. I walked along the side of the van toward the workbench in the back of the garage.
“Slowly!” he ordered, so I did as he said. I glanced over my shoulder at him. His figure was silhouetted against the dim backdrop of the streetlights.
“Now, where’s this secret place?”
“Here,” I said. “Under the bench.”
“Fine. Get it. Nice and slow.”
I leaned forward slightly and made a show of reaching under the bench with my left hand, feeling around for a secret place that didn’t exist. My body shielded my right hand. I felt around with it on top of the workbench until I found the handle of my large crescent wrench.
“It’s taped under here somewhere,” I said, patting around under the bench for his benefit.
“Hurry up.” He jabbed the gun toward me. As soon as I saw which shadow was the gun, I twisted and swung down at it with all my strength. The solid metal of the wrench head struck flesh. I heard a sickening crack and then the sound of the gun clattering to the floor. The man howled in pain, his words unintelligible.
I swung again, aiming for his head.
Miraculously, he pivoted away and the head of my wrench thumped loudly on his shoulder. He howled again, this time in both pain and anger. Before I could swing again, a shadowy foot shot toward me and caught me flush in the gut. My breath whooshed out and I sank to one knee, struggling for breath.
There came a scuffling of feet and my attacker was gone.
I rose and turned on the light. A small revolver lay on the concrete floor near the front tire of my van. I picked it up, switched off the light and made my way inside.
After I locked the back door and slid a chair under the knob of the front door, I returned to the bedroom. In the closet, I lifted the loose floorboard and looked inside. The knife was there, still wrapped and undisturbed.
“That was stupid,” I told Oster over the phone, still seething over the break-in and the attack.
“What was?”
“You know what,” I said. It occurred to me that if the police suspected him of Camille’s murder, his phone line might be tapped.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Oster said, and I guessed that he was concerned about the same thing.
“I did an assessment of my business,” I told him coldly. “It’s worth a lot more than I originally thought.”
“Really?”
“Double the price,” I told him.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what you get when you send idiots to negotiate,” I told him.
Before he could say any more, I hung up and headed to the sporting goods store.
Three days later, I called Oster and we set things up. We’d meet in Cannon Park, each carrying a black gym bag. I’d have the knife in mine, he’d have the money in his. We’d switch and that would be it.
I stopped at the post office first and mailed off a package addressed to Detective Ray Browning, River City Police Department. I sent in via ground, so it’d be about a week before he got it.
I arrived at the park a full half hour ahead of the appointed time. The day was clear and a little windy. Oster arrived five minutes early, pulling up in his blue Lexus and parking at the curb. I watched him approach, wending his way around dog piles in his two hundred dollar shoes. The black gym bag swung heavily in his left hand.
His face bore a stony expression, unlike the fake grief or the real sneer I’d seen previously. He offered his right hand.
Surprised, I took it and we shook.
He set his bag on the bench beside mine. “Shall we inspect the goods?” he asked.
“Sure.”
I watched as he unzipped the gym bag I brought along. He fumbled with the towel, tearing the material away from the dried, sticky brown substance on the blade. Once the knife was exposed, he stared at it for a few seconds.
“It’s darker than I thought,” he finally said.
“What?”
“The blood.”
“It gets that way when it dries. All the oxygen goes out of it and it starts to decay.”
He glanced at me. “I guess you would know.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know blood.”
He gestured at the other bag. I unzipped it. The bag was filled with stacks of one hundred dollar bills, banded together. I reached out and feathered the edges of one. All hundreds. I rummaged around inside and pulled a random bundle from near the bottom and riffled the edge of it. All real.
My throat went dry.
I zipped the bag shut with a shaking hand.
Oster held out a folded packet of paper and a pen. “The contract,” he explained. “For your cleaning business.”
I nodded, skimmed the document and scrawled my signature. It looked different to me, like the signature of a wealthy man.
He took the contract from me and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “It was all business, you know.”
“What was?”
“The man I sent. Camille. This deal here. All of it.”
“I heard the policy on your wife was a million dollars,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’ll come out all right,” he admitted.
“Is Wanda business, too?” I asked.
He let himself smile and the expression looked out of place on his face. “All work and no play,” he said to me, as if we were two regular guys sitting on barstools, having a cold one.
I laughed anyway, because I knew something he didn’t.
I didn’t go home. I did not pass go. I collected my five hundred grand and I went directly to Mexico.
The drive took me about thirty-six hours, most of it on I-5 once I hit Oregon. I stopped once at a motel about an hour outside San Francisco and slept for a solid eight hours. Other than
that, I drove, stopping only for food and bathroom breaks.
I cruised across the border after answering only cursory questions. I imagined it might be tougher coming back into the United States, but I wasn’t planning on making that trip.
Once in Mexico, I took my time and drove slowly south in Baja California. After a day, with several stops at the sights and to eat wonderful seafood and drink Mexican beer, I arrived in La Paz.
La Paz was a beautiful, laid-back town that catered to enough tourism to know how to treat a rich American. I checked into a nice hotel and started looking for property.
I thought about things back in River City while the real estate broker in La Paz showed me small houses near the beach (and cash would be no problema, señor, she assured me). I caught myself smiling when I imagined Detective Browning opening up my package with the bloody hunting knife and the note, this knife killed Camille Oster. I knew that their forensics people would be able to match up the blood to her and the bloody print on the handle to Gary Oster. My smile usually broke into a grin when I saw a stunned Oster sputtering during his arrest, unable to believe that he hadn’t paid for the real knife covered with his wife’s blood.
I know blood, I’d told him, and that was true. But apparently, he didn’t. A little Karo syrup and food coloring convinced him. And he never stopped to consider that someone else could go buy a hunting knife as easily as he could. He probably thought he was being pretty smart to buy such a cheap, common brand of knife, and I suppose he was, but it sure made things easier for me.
Yeah, I would have made a great cop. I was good at figuring things out.
Almost all of the women had dark hair in La Paz, I noticed. I met many and came to know a few very well. After a while, though, I found myself wondering if Wanda would like it in Mexico. I wondered if it would help to salve some of the hurt she’d undoubtedly felt when Gary Oster went to jail for the murder of his wife.
I was sure it would.
Baker-124
“Baker-124?”
I reached for the mike. “Go ahead.”
“Respond to 905 N. Monroe at the Denton Apartments on a welfare check.” The dispatcher’s voice droned. “Complainant is calling from Tacoma and is concerned about her five year old niece living in Apartment 3C. Complainant claims it’s an unsafe environment. 905 N. Monroe, Apartment 3C.”
“Copy,” I said. I thought for a moment, then asked, “Is she planning on coming over here to pick up the child?”
“Negative. She is requesting a CPS placement.”
I copied the transmission and started toward the Denton Apartments. Then why are we taking this complaint? I knew the answer, though. It was all about liability. The call was probably bogus, but if we don’t go and it isn’t, we’re on the hook.
Then again, I suppose it could be valid. The Denton Apartments are a dive.
I drove at a leisurely pace toward Monroe. It amazed me that even two years after coming home from Afghanistan, I still scanned the road ahead of me for IEDs. Like some domestic terrorist was going to plant a howitzer round in a pothole or something. It was crazy, but I couldn’t stop doing it.
A short time later, I pulled up outside the Denton Apartments and exited the patrol car. As I walked up three cracked, concrete steps to the front door of the apartment building, I had another thought about my tour over there. All of the buildings were cracked and ill-kept, too. There was little infrastructure in place to fix those damaged in the fighting or from years of neglect. Even the restoration work the civil engineers were able to do barely made a dent. And the frequent eruption of small, urban battles didn’t help.
Still, when I got home, I expected to return to paradise. At times like this, when I see how poorly maintained parts of my own city are, I wonder how far we are from the very same social upheaval the Afghans experienced.
Don’t be stupid. This is America.
The front door to the Denton was locked with a combination key, but I knew the combination. All cops did, we came here so often. I punched in 9-0-5 and turned the handle. It opened up and I went inside.
My nostrils were immediately assaulted with the smell of body odor, dog crap, urine and spilled liquor. I breathed through my mouth to minimize the effect and headed for the stairs. The hallways were dim, lit by forty watt bulbs, half of which were burnt out or had been stolen.
For some reason, I found 3C on the second floor instead of the third. I stood outside the door and listened for a while, but could only hear the low murmur of a television. Down the hall, a stereo blared. Closer than that, I could smell someone cooking hamburger. That odor mixed uncomfortably with the lingering stench in the hallway.
I knocked on the door. It jiggled under the weight of my fist. I recognized it as an interior door rather than a secure front door.
Nice.
After a few moments, there was a rustle inside and the knob turned. A little girl about five years old swung the door open and stared up at me with a guileless smile. Her face was streaked with dirt and her long hair was tweaked from at least one night’s worth of sleep. A dirty, white men’s T-shirt hung off of her little body and past her knees.
“Hi,” she said softly. There was no fear in her eyes.
I’d dealt with a lot more children than I’d expected to when my National Guard unit was called up. In fact, they’d been everywhere. When I came on the job right after our return stateside, I was surprised at how often children became entangled in the kind of problems we handled as cops.
I squatted down to her level, making my leather gear creak. “Hello, there. My name is Officer Zack. What’s your name?”
“Zoey. Are you a policeman?”
I nodded. “I sure am. Is your mommy or daddy home?”
“Uh-huh. They’re sleeping.”
I smiled at her. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping, too?”
Zoey shrugged. “I’m not tired. I’m five.”
“I see.” I swept my gaze over the girl, looking at her with cop eyes. I didn’t see any bruises. She didn’t look unhealthy or overly thin. “What did you have for dinner tonight, Zoey?”
“Mac ‘n cheese,” the little girl said. “And I watched The Wheels of the Fortune with Mommy.”
“You did?”
“Uh-huh. And they had the pretty woman turning all the letters and she had a shiny dress and Mommy said she was bee-yoo-ti-ful.”
“A shiny dress, huh? What color was it?”
“Shiny color,” Zoey said. She pointed at my silver badge. “Like that color. Shiny.”
“I see. Zoey, can you wake up your Mommy or your Daddy so that I can talk to them?”
“Sure. Can you come in? You can sit in Daddy’s chair, if you want. He’s in bed.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll wait here.”
“Okay,” Zoey said and started to move away. Suddenly, she reversed her direction and flung herself at me, wrapping her small arms around my neck and hugging tightly. Surprised, I almost fell over backward, but was able to recover and returned the embrace. While I patted her back, I had to smile. They teach us to be ready for ambushes in the Army and how to be on guard with suspects during the police academy, but some things they don’t train you for. Surprise attack hugs are one of those things.
After a few moments, she broke away and scampered back inside the apartment. I remained squatted down for a long while, letting Zoey’s unabashed affection—the tenderness of the little girl’s embrace, its purity—soak in over a few long moments.
When it finally did sink in, a terrible sadness came with it. I knew, or at least I was pretty sure, what I would find inside. I just hoped it would give me sufficient cause to make an emergency placement of Zoey with CPS. Otherwise, I would have to leave her here to her fate.
Her fate. I stood slowly and sighed. I knew what that would be, too.
Screwed for life.
There was some more rustling inside the apartment and a tiny woman with messy brown hair appeared in the doorway. �
�Yes, sir?” she said, her voice groggy.
“Everything all right, tonight, ma’am?” I asked.
She gave me a confused nod. “Fine. I fell asleep watching TV, but other than that…”
“What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Paula.”
“Do you have a sister in Tacoma?”
“Yeah. Peggy. Why?”
“She called,” I told her. “She was concerned.”
Paula snorted. “Yeah, she’s real concerned.”
“She called,” I repeated.
Paula stifled a yawn. “About what?”
“Can I come in and talk with you, ma’am?”
She stepped aside and motioned for me to enter.
I walked in and found exactly what I expected. A small couch and mis-matched easy chair, both torn in several places and leaking stuffing. The tiny television sat on top of a folding table against the wall. Slight static obscured the picture. The thin carpet was in desperate need of a vacuuming, but there weren’t any animals in the house, so at least it was clear of feces and urine. In fact, the smell inside the apartment was considerably better than out in the hallway.
I asked for her last name and date of birth. After jotting it down in my notepad, I ran her on the data channel.
“What’s this about, officer?” Paula asked. “Should I wake up my husband?”
Zoey ran to me and wrapped her arms around his leg again. She squeezed before I could answer.
Paula smiled. “She likes cops.”
I patted her on the head gently. She continued to hug my leg. Her eyes were squeezed shut and a huge smile was on her face.
When it was obvious that Zoey was into her hug for the long term, I looked at Paula. I could see some of the same features in her face as Zoey’s, but Paula’s seemed to be just slightly off-center of beautiful. I was convinced that her daughter’s elfin features, though, would grow and mature into stunning beauty.
For all the good it’ll do her.
“I’m not sure of the details,” I told Paula, “but your sister called with some concerns. Has anything out of the ordinary happened in the last few days in your family?”